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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28132047">but a walking shadow</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/opinionhaver69/pseuds/opinionhaver69'>opinionhaver69</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Luminous Dead - Caitlin Starling</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Bad Ending, Drugging without consent, F/F, Hallucinations, Manipulative Relationship, Villainous Em, not shipfic</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-12-17</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-12-17</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-10 14:33:31</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Major Character Death</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>4,872</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28132047</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/opinionhaver69/pseuds/opinionhaver69</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Em made a small, exasperated noise. “Fine. The caver’s survival was secondary to the mission. You knew that already, Gyre.”</p><p>“Yeah.” Gyre smiled unthinkingly, her lips twisting up into a bitter, unhappy grimace. “I just thought it was different, you and me. Stupid. I thought you gave a shit - that I was different. That you'd changed.”</p><p>There was silence, save for the soft sound of Em breathing. Despite herself, Gyre wished that she could feel those breaths lifting the small hairs above her ear, raising goosebumps on the flesh of her neck. Anything would do - the barest hint of companionship, of humanity, down in this desolate and lonely cave. </p><p>And then Em spoke. “It was different. I did care about you. I do. More than the others.”</p><p>***</p><p>So, what if the end wasn't the end? A continuation of the story that casts the book's canonical ending in an entirely different light.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Em Arasgain &amp; Gyre Price</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>8</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>12</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Yuletide 2020</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>but a walking shadow</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/mechanonymouse/gifts">mechanonymouse</a>.</li>



    </ul><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Happy Yuletide! </p><p>An obvious YMMV but while I was ostensibly glad the book avoided burying its gays/tanking the lesbian relationship, I did simultaneously find Em's rescue of Gyre at the end and everything that followed to be a little saccharine considering how thoroughly fucked &amp; one-sidedly manipulative their relationship had been up to that point (to me, the book's ending literally felt like fix-it fic), so here's a version picking up after that ending which takes the shitty route instead. I liked the prompt a lot and I tried to lean into as much of it as possible - I hope you enjoy! :)</p><p>To anyone looking for more romantic/light-hearted content, please heed the warnings in the tags. </p><p>Title from Macbeth!</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>She was topside, now. </p><p>Gyre had begun to move through life as if in a peculiar haze. It was almost like the cave had altered how she experienced time, somehow - in the weeks since she’d been rescued she often found that whenever she concentrated on something the seconds would begin to spool out with gradually increasing lassitude, languorously stretching out in front of her like a physically malleable substance, and then would snap sharply into hyperspeed as soon as her attention lapsed by even the tiniest fraction. It was a nauseating sensation, like slipping down the face of a boulder when a foothold gave out unexpectedly. </p><p>In general, everything seemed to move much faster. Her recovery progressed quicker than the estimates - even the most optimistic ones - had suggested, and conversely her time in the cave seemed to have occurred so long ago that it could almost have happened to someone else. Her memories felt unclear, the edges blurry - it was as though she’d only watched them on tape rather than experiencing them herself, and she related the events of the expedition calmly to doctors and psychiatrists as if asked to describe a dream she’d once had that had inexplicably lingered with her long after waking. </p><p>When she was released from the hospital, one month or maybe two after her rescue, she was only dimly perturbed to find that she had nowhere to go. She couldn't go home; her life before the cave seemed impossibly distant, and her mind skated off it like water off a rock whenever she tried to think about it. The same, too, was true of her future. She was going to locate and confront her mother - with Em by her side, yes, that had been decided - but she wanted to be whole when she did it, and her arm hadn’t yet healed enough to be fitted with a fully operable, cutting-edge prosthesis. And in the meantime… She didn’t remember agreeing to stay at Em’s, but simultaneously it felt to both of them as though that was the only option, the only possible choice that made sense, and so it was that Gyre found herself exchanging the rigidly uncomfortable hospital bed for the obscenely indulgent queen-sized mattress in Em’s high-ceilinged bedroom. </p><p>“I can sleep on the couch,” Em said hesitantly, that first night after Gyre had walked in through the front door. She was skittish, still, around Gyre, and held her hands awkwardly at her sides in an uncharacteristic display of uncertainty. Guilt, Gyre supposed. It didn’t much suit her, like a daring outfit she was only trying on for size.</p><p>“If we’re apart, we’re alone,” Gyre said in response. The words felt familiar - she’d said them before, she thought. In the hospital? She frowned, skimming back through memories as intangible as silt in water, then abandoned the effort as futile and looked back at Em. “I don’t want to be alone.”</p><p>“Okay.” Em nodded, her expression smoothing itself out into - what, relief? Absolution? Gyre didn’t have much time to ponder it before Em slid past her into the bedroom, murmuring about clean sheets - and, if she was being honest, she didn’t have the energy, either. Em’s expressions, her words, even her simplest actions, they were as alien to Gyre as the Tunneler she’d come face-to-face with below ground. More so, even, because unlike the Tunneler, Em had hidden her inhumanity behind a human face. </p><p>They didn’t have sex, at first. Not the first night, nor the second. But within a week Gyre found herself reaching out for Em at night, and Em, miraculously, reached back. Her body was soft and plush and real beneath the lightweight clothes she wore to bed, and Gyre took her time discovering it, mapping out its boundaries and hidden places with the same ardent dedication she used to bring to the caves that had taken her love without earning it. Gently - reverently - she skimmed her mouth over the silvery-white stretchmarks that marred the smoothness of Em’s hips and lower belly. The fingers of her right hand slid up the inside of a dimpled thigh until they reached the secret folds of flesh concealed between Em’s legs, slipping through the wetness there until Em writhed and cried out beneath her. It didn’t take her long to learn the topography of Em’s body, shorter still to litter it with the marks of her own mouth and hands. </p><p>Em, for her part, was a wild lover, grasping and panting and directing Gyre wherever she wanted her with a kind of purposeful abandon, and Gyre gave in easily, her mind already accustomed to placidly following the directives Em laid out for her. Frequently she found her hands obeying before her brain had even consciously noted the request. Her own pleasure came later, when Em - satisfied and gleaming in the starlight that shone through the window - pressed her back against the mattress and fucked her hard and relentless with two crooked fingers, her sharp teeth white and exact as she smiled ferociously down at Gyre. It was good, so good Gyre felt she might die from it, and yet it was perversely isolating, too, because at no other time did the gulf between the two of them feel wider than when Gyre, undone, looked up to see Em, shuttered and inscrutable and in control, still. </p><p>“You’re hard to read, sometimes,” she said afterwards, the sweat on her brow cooling quickly in the chill night air. “I don’t always know what it is you want from me.”</p><p>At first Em just smiled, close-lipped, her hand trailing soft lines up the goose-pimpled flesh of Gyre’s stomach. Her eyes were dark, shrouded in shadows. She was silent for so long that Gyre stopped expecting an answer, and then she said, quietly, “There are ways to get what I want that don’t necessarily involve asking for it.” </p><p>Well, Gyre thought, that was certainly true. The cave came back to her in a series of rapid flashes - the fear, the panic. <em>The abandonment, the drugs.</em> Could she really have moved past it all so quickly? And Em… She’d made a gesture, certainly, one that had seemed to place them both on equal footing. She couldn’t control Gyre anymore - not physically, at least. But she was a woman skilled at manipulation, so used to deploying it at her will that Gyre couldn’t be sure if she was even capable of existing without it, of entering into any kind of relationship without seeking to subjugate, to bend her partner's will intractably to her own. Certainly, Gyre would be a fool to trust so easily, after everything that had happened underground. And if she knew that, then why was she here, slipping back into Em’s irresistible pull as though at its centre stood something of worth, something redeemable, a pearl that might shine in Gyre’s cupped hand if she held it up to the light? </p><p>In the dark, the bedroom looked like the cave. Gyre turned her face into Em’s soft skin and squeezed her eyes shut. </p><p>*</p><p>It could have gone on like that, and it did, for a while, time slipping between Gyre’s fingers like rope in a cave only to catch and snag on unforeseen obstacles whenever she was least anticipating it. It might have lasted forever, perhaps, if Gyre hadn’t woken up one morning, and - her brain mostly asleep, still fuzzily unengaged with her body and her surroundings - reached out with her left hand for the glass of water Em had left on the nightstand the evening before.</p><p>Her left hand. In the next second realisation smacked into her, hard and fast as rockfall, and her arm twitched involuntarily, clumsily knocking against the glass of water and sending it off the table to shatter into a million jagged pieces on the expensive hardwood floor.</p><p>Gyre barely even heard the crash. Her attention was fixated on her fingers, outstretched and intact, not prosthetic but fully flesh and blood. Wonderingly, she closed her fingers into a fist, twisting it this way and that as though what she saw might simply be an optical illusion, a trick of the light.</p><p>She herself had severed the limb. She alone had felt the pain of its detachment. She had seen its form, broken and pathetic on the floor of the cave; she had left it there, the suit sealing itself over the wound, and she had been rescued. By Em.</p><p>Slowly, disbelievingly, she pulled her gaze away from her arm and glanced down at the floor. </p><p>There was nothing there. </p><p>She looked back up at the nightstand. There was the glass of water, unbroken, three quarters full. </p><p>“No,” she said softly, and then she closed her eyes and said it again, “No,” more insistent that time, almost a shout - and the word echoed out around her as if in mockery, bouncing back to her from the walls. </p><p>Not the bedroom walls. The room wasn’t big enough, wasn’t empty enough, for sound to echo like that. Grimly, bitterly, Gyre smiled to herself, and slowly opened her eyes. </p><p>She was still in the cave. Of course she was still in the cave. The terrain stretched out in all directions - above her, beneath her, surrounding her where she lay; rock, unending rock, cradling her like an unforgiving bier, fading into darkness at the peripheries of her vision except for where the bioluminescent spores glimmered their unearthly blue-green glow. The memory of the hours before her rescue came back to her in a sudden rush; involuntarily she noted that she was alone, at least, no longer plagued by the restless spirits of Isolde, Jennie and Eli. The stump of her arm throbbed dully. </p><p>“What did you do?” she said - snarled, really - without even checking to see if comms were on. Like a sixth sense, she knew that Em was there, watching her. What a strange time to have developed faith, she thought wildly, and what a terrible creature to have placed it in. </p><p>“Gyre?” Em sounded surprised, a little distant. There was a rustle, and then her voice came in louder, closer to Gyre’s ear. “Fuck. You weren’t supposed to…”</p><p>“Wake up?” Gyre let out a small noise that was almost a laugh. It came back to her off the faraway walls, sounding twisted and desperate even to her own ears. “Yeah, I bet.”</p><p>“Gyre…” Em sighed. “Listen, before you freak out-”</p><p>“Before I freak out? <em>Fuck,</em> Em, what did you do to me?” Gyre tossed her head back in disbelief. The movement jarred her arm, her stomach, and she gasped weakly, pain surging over her in a nauseating, roiling wave. It distracted her from her anger, her despair, and for a moment she lay as still as possible, panting like a wounded animal with her one remaining fist clenched tight at her side. Now that she was out of the dream, she wondered how it could ever have seemed real; time felt regular now, each second marching past in an indifferent parade of sound and fury, and her thoughts were sharp and clear despite the unrelenting pain that hazed the borders of the scene in front of her. </p><p>Em took advantage of the silence. “Unfortunately, a rescue would have been impossible,” she said crisply, her tone at once detached and official. “The severity of your injuries, your location, the time it would take to get to you - it would have been a useless expenditure of resources. Your chances of survival were virtually none.”</p><p>“Virtually?” Gyre coughed weakly. “And what are they now?”</p><p>A beat of silence. Then -</p><p>“None,” Em said. </p><p><em>None.</em> Gyre didn’t know why she was surprised. Wasn’t this how she’d always suspected it would end? Her fate in Em’s hands - and Em, at the end of it all, making her decision based on <em>expenditure of resources</em>. It was Gyre’s own fault for signing her life over to a corporation and forgetting - because Em was only one person, after all, and a woman at that, a woman she’d <em>liked</em> - that that’s what it was. And the life of a single human would never override the financial interests of a corporation. Gyre knew that going in. Gyre knew that, and she’d been naive enough to fall into Em's trap, stupid enough to explicitly threaten Em’s livelihood. </p><p><em>Stupid. Her own fault.</em> What power had she thought she'd had, down here at Em’s mercy? She had been hopelessly, helplessly outplayed. Bracing herself against the anticipation of pain, she tried to get up - she could find herself a better place to die, at least - but her legs flatly refused to move. “Unlock the suit,” she said, her voice laced with impotent frustration.</p><p>“Gyre...” Em began, her tone chagrined and slightly awkward. “I’m sorry, but - the suit, it's... it isn't locked.”</p><p>Oh. Gyre tried again to move her legs, furiously giving it all she had, gritting her teeth as she strained. After a moment, her left foot twitched, then stilled. God, she was fucked. She gave up the effort and slumped back against the solid rock, exhausted. “Was rescuing me ever even a possibility?” she asked instead, hating the smallness of her voice in the wide open emptiness of the space around her.</p><p>“Of course it was,” Em said immediately. “I - you have to know, Gyre - I looked through all the options. I really did. If it had been at all plausible, we would have tried.”</p><p>The truth, or another lie? Em sounded sincere, but she had sounded sincere before, when she’d promised Gyre she’d get her out of there. And what difference did it make, in the end? Gyre was dead either way. Her breath rasped in her chest, misted the remnants of her broken faceplate. She wondered how many breaths she even had left, then closed her eyes and voiced the first question that came to mind in an attempt to block out her own anguished thoughts. “What did you even do to me? It felt... Fuck, it felt <em>real.</em>” </p><p>“It was designed to,” Em said simply. “There’s a combination of drugs - mostly sedatives, it doesn’t matter which - that when administered together in the correct amounts can induce powerful hallucinations. A trance-like state, almost. I know you didn’t want me to drug you, Gyre, but - I thought it would be better to let you fade out like that. Unaware. Peaceful.” She paused, then continued, her tone delicately clinical. “It’s been... useful, on previous expeditions. It dulls your mind, your instincts, alters how you experience time - it’s quite remarkable that you managed to break through it, in fact. Your brain must have picked up on something off, some detail, but usually the conscious mind isn’t nearly active enough to do that.”</p><p>Drugged again, of course. Gyre was so tired. She forced her eyes back open, squinting and blinking hard until the cave reformed itself hazily around her in an amalgamation of dark and jagged shapes. “Why did you tell me you were coming to get me, then? Why did you lie?” She had to push the words out through increasingly numb lips. “If you knew you were just going to drug me. What was the point-”</p><p>“The way the drugs work,” Em said, interrupting her. “We’ve found - I’ve found - that the hallucinations they incite are strongly influenced by the power of suggestion. I knew that… if I told you that you were safe, that I was on my way down to rescue you, there was a pretty good chance that the trance would use that as a starting-point. It was for your own good, Gyre-”</p><p>“Fuck off.” The words were instinctual. “My own good would be not dying in this goddamn cave. <em>My own good</em> would have been you telling me the truth and letting me try to get out of here on my own volition.”</p><p>"You were too weak." Em sighed again. “Trust me, your death is a suboptimal outcome for all involved, Gyre.”</p><p>“Suboptimal.” Gyre snorted. “Wow. Thanks.” </p><p>“You know what I mean. I didn’t want this.” </p><p>“I really thought you cared about me.” Gyre’s control was slipping: she hadn’t meant to say that out loud, but she had, and now she had to say something else into the silence that followed rather than wait to hear whatever bullshit Em would tell her in response. “What about - in the hallucination, me and you were... “ She broke off, clenching her teeth angrily. “Together. Sort of. What was your goal with that, trying to - to make me feel something for you? So that I wouldn’t blame you for my death if the hallucination didn’t hold?” </p><p>There was a pause, then Em said, “I don’t control everything you see in there. Suggestion is just that, Gyre - suggestion. Some of it… some of it comes from you, too.” Her tone was impossibly, horribly gentle.</p><p>Gyre’s insides roiled with shame. “Oh,” she said simply, then fell silent, staring off into the blackness of the cave and waiting for it to descend and consume her. </p><p>“But, I mean…” Em exhaled softly, then continued less hesitantly, as if she’d encountered some sort of private conflict and found herself strengthened by the decision she'd come to. “You’re not wrong either, I suppose. The circumstances you’re made to endure in the cave - the fear, the desolation, with only me in your ear for company… It wasn’t intentional, not at all, but in previous expeditions we found that the caver becoming emotionally attached was a common side effect of the situation. They became overdependent on my company - they developed feelings, the nature of which confused them. It became… well, to tell the truth, somewhat predictable.” </p><p>“Holy shit.” Realisation dawned in the pit of Gyre’s stomach, sick and heavy like the paste she’d been forced to rely on for nutrition. “You used that, didn’t you? To manipulate us? When you encouraged me to keep going - you made it feel like we were in it together. Like I was special, like my survival was particularly important to you… And the whole time, it was just your own interests you were protecting, wasn't it?” When no answer was immediately forthcoming, she said it again, more forcefully this time. <em>"Wasn't it?"</em></p><p>“I used it. Yes.” Em spoke the words plainly, although they were imbued with the faintest tinge of guilt. Or was that just Gyre, projecting, hearing what she wanted to hear? “Like I said, Gyre, it wasn’t intentional. It’s just something that happened - and you’re right, I went with it, to facilitate the completion of the mission. To heighten my chances of success, but also the caver’s chances of survival.”</p><p>“Bullshit,” said Gyre. “The chance that you’d get what you want was never tied to the caver’s chance of getting out alive. If anything, the fucking opposite, Em. You’re a monster, but you don’t have to lie to me now - we both know I’m not getting out of here. Not alive; not at all. You made sure of that.” </p><p>Em made a small, exasperated noise. “Fine. The caver’s survival was secondary to the mission. You knew that already, Gyre.” </p><p>“Yeah.” Gyre smiled unthinkingly, her lips twisting up into a bitter, unhappy grimace. “I just thought it was different, you and me. Stupid. I thought you gave a shit - that I was different. That you'd changed.”</p><p>There was silence, save for the soft sound of Em breathing. Despite herself, Gyre wished that she could feel those breaths lifting the small hairs above her ear, raising goosebumps on the flesh of her neck. Anything would do - the barest hint of companionship, of humanity, down in this desolate and lonely cave. </p><p>And then Em spoke. “It was different. I did care about you. I do. More than the others.”</p><p>“Yeah?” Gyre’s voice was quiet, her intonation almost lazy, almost a drawl. “Well, I don’t believe you.”</p><p>“And that’s fair, Gyre. But you’re the one who said it - I don’t have to lie to you, now. I felt something for you, I did, but...” She broke off, then continued matter-of-factly. "I think it's rather too late in the day for change, don't you? Not when I was so close - and not when so many people had already died. Did you really think you could come from the cave and go from being a tool I'd used for my own ends to, what, my girlfriend?" She sighed, wistful and chiding. "I'm not exactly an expert on the subject, Gyre, I can admit that, but does that sound like a healthy basis for a relationship to you?" </p><p>What did it matter now what Gyre had thought, what did it matter? Gyre had been a fool. She closed her eyes again, let herself drift for a while. She didn’t even remember where in the cave she was, but it didn’t matter. It didn’t matter. She could forget all that she’d learned, all the ways of getting her bearings; this would be her final resting place, this empty cavern with the high ceiling and the glowing mushrooms and the faraway sound of tumbling water. There was a strange kind of comfort in that, and even the pain seemed more distant, now. </p><p>Suddenly, one last thought occurred to her, and her eyes snapped open. “Em?” she asked, pricking up her ears and listening keenly for any sign that Em was still there, waiting on the line for her caver’s inevitable end. </p><p>“I’m still here, Gyre.” </p><p>“The hallucinations - the other ones, I mean. Before. Isolde, and..." <em>What were their names?</em>  “The other cavers, the ones you sent down before me.” The darkness seemed so much closer now, pressing down over Gyre’s face like a thick, heavy blanket - for all she knew, the corpses of those other cavers lay within arm’s reach. “Were those you too? Were you drugging me then?” It didn’t make sense - why would Em have done that, when it had led to Gyre removing her faceplate, summoning the Tunneler, damning herself? - but in the mire of death’s approach her thoughts had become unrooted, incoherent, and Em had told so many lies Gyre’s grasp of the truth was tenuous and foggy. Anything was possible at this point; any of the cave’s hazards could have been Em’s doing, for all she knew. </p><p>“No.” Em’s response was simple, and it came quickly. Too quickly, and Em seemed to recognise that, because she cleared her throat and clarified, “It wasn’t me. But they weren’t - it wasn’t all in your head, either.” </p><p>“What?” Gyre was unmoored; she didn’t understand. </p><p>Em blew out a quick gust of breath, her manner decisive. “Alright, I might as well tell you what I know. What you saw - Isolde, whatever else - they weren’t real, I didn’t lie about that. But it didn’t come from you. We don’t understand it yet, not fully, but it’s the Tunneler, or the Tunneler and the cave, acting in some kind of symbiosis. The hallucinations are bait, they make you slip up, and then the Tunneler hunts you down from whatever mistake you made.” Her voice had taken on an unsettling new note; she sounded awed, almost impressed. “The beast and the environment working together, adapting to the technology of the suits… it’s just evolution, really, in principle, just far smarter and faster than anything I’ve seen before.” </p><p>“But…” Gyre floundered, her thoughts jumbled and confused. “If you knew that, why didn’t you say? Why did you let me chase after Isolde? You acted like you didn’t want me to lift the faceplate - but I wouldn’t have done, if you’d told me that then. Surely you know that.”</p><p>“I do know.” The words were softly spoken, but they landed hard behind Gyre’s sternum, each one making contact with the solid weight of a punch. </p><p>“Oh,” Gyre said, her mouth suddenly dry. So Em had damned her on purpose. “I see.”</p><p>“It’s not what you think,” Em said hurriedly.</p><p>“And what do I think, Em?”</p><p>Em’s answer came promptly. “That I knew you were recording the expedition, so I sabotaged you before you could come topside and ruin me, while making you believe I was on your side so that you wouldn’t go rogue and end up doing something dangerous with unpredictable consequences.”</p><p>Reluctantly, Gyre had to give her that one. “Okay. Yeah, more or less.” </p><p>“Well, it wasn’t that. Or - it wasn’t just that, at least.” Em sounded peculiarly neutral for someone who was admitting to having led Gyre directly to her death - but then Gyre was just the latest in a long line, after all, and Em’s talent for this had been honed already. “I wasn’t planning on it, but when you started experiencing the hallucinations - I don’t expect you to understand, Gyre, but if you were in my position, in my field, you’d know. The potential for new discoveries… it doesn’t always just land in your lap like that. My company is at the cutting-edge of suit construction; if I want to keep it there, I need to know how the suit will respond to encounters we can’t simulate outside of the cave setting. And I was right, too; if I hadn't made that decision, we'd never have come face to face with the Tunneler like we did. Do you know how many people have done that and <em>lived?</em>” She was excited, now, her voice rising in both pitch and octave as she made her argument, and Gyre felt a dull kick of rage in the pit of her stomach. She, not they, had had to survive the Tunneler - and by rights the victory was hers, not Em's. “If I can make a suit that’s resistant to those hallucinations - can you imagine, Gyre?”</p><p>“No.” She couldn’t. Couldn’t imagine being someone for whom profit mattered more than human lives; couldn’t conceive of how sick in the head Em must be to have sent myriad explorers down into a dangerous cave to die for her and her cause and never once feel enough remorse to stop. Gyre had been wrong to believe that Em could be redeemed so easily after having killed so many people - and look where that belief had led her. Dying alone in the loneliest place on this godforsaken planet. She had thought of herself as being so cynical, so jaded - why had she been so willing to see good in Em where clearly none existed?</p><p>Maybe it was just her desire to love. To love and be loved; to love and not be abandoned. </p><p>Well, whatever. She didn’t want to die, but at least she would go knowing that she hadn't been twisted into something warped, something evil. Perhaps it was foolish to believe in redemption, but there were far worse things to be defined by - and even if her life had been almost unspeakably shitty at points, it was nice to know that it hadn’t ruined her. Not to the extent that the same had ruined Em, anyway, who in her wild and irrepressible grief had cemented her own damnation more and more with every passing year. </p><p>“Gyre? Gyre!” Dimly, Gyre became aware that Em was trying to get her attention. From the sharpness of her tone, she might have been trying for a while.</p><p>“What?” Gyre replied tiredly. It was getting harder and harder to talk; the word came bubbling up from her throat like blood, thick and garbled.   </p><p>“I - I don’t think you have long left.” To her credit, Em managed to sound apologetic. “The drugs put you out for about ten hours - the suit’s helped sustain you thus far, but it’s not looking good.”</p><p>“Alright. Thanks.” Vaguely, Gyre wondered why Em had felt the need to tell her that. </p><p>“I was thinking…” Em hesitated briefly, then forged on. “I can try putting you back in the hallucination. If you wanted. It might not work, now that you’re aware of it - but I can up the dose, maybe, and at the very least it’ll space you out. Just, you know - if you don’t want to feel yourself die.”</p><p>The hard, unflinching truth, or the comforting lie? Which did Gyre want? Up until now, she had chosen truth, always. Was it worth it, just to feel in control? Had it ever been worth it? </p><p>For a moment she lay still and silent. The darkness didn’t bother her anymore; there was a shimmering light on the edges of her vision, and she couldn’t tell if it was the bioluminescent fungi growing on the cave walls, or something else entirely. She thought of Jennie, of Eli, of Isolde - of her own mother, living a life that didn’t involve her somewhere far off-planet. Of Em, her beautiful, monstrous Em. </p><p>Em had never been hers, though, not really. Only in the dream, and in the cave, and albeit in different ways, neither of those experiences had been real. So what good was the truth, when it could be so easily manipulated?</p><p>With a brief flicker of surprise, tolling at the edges of her fading consciousness like a distant bell, Gyre realised she knew her answer already. Her fingers reached out involuntarily as she summoned the last vestiges of her strength to give it - and in the echoing silence that followed, her lips twitched upwards in a final, rueful smile that no one would ever see.</p>
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